


I Will Keep You

by FluffyBeaumont



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Toclafane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyBeaumont/pseuds/FluffyBeaumont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Master unleashes the Toclafane in a bid to destroy Earth, the Doctor decides that spending time together might be helpful...is he expecting too much?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Keep You

Time held me green and dying  
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

(Dylan Thomas: "Fern Hill" 1945)

 

 

It was night, but it could have been anything besides night, really. It could have been anywhere but here. It was a stopping place, somewhere to park the TARDIS while he slept — while they slept.

While the Master slept, and he sat there and watched. They each had a room to themselves, a room that was more or less in the same place whenever one of them wanted a rest. Sometimes She indulged Her sense of whimsy and moved the rooms around, switched out furnishings, changed the bathroom. It made sense to him to have it as close as possible to the human environment that the Master was used to. So, bedrooms and bathrooms and even a kitchen. Kettle. Cups for tea. Milk in the fridge. Everything usual...everything normal.

_Are you going to just keep me?_

The TARDIS really was the only safe place for a man like him. So here they were. It ought to have been absurdly simple.

_The TARDIS is the only safe place for you._

_So you’re going to just keep me – like a pet?_

The inside of the Master’s bedroom was decorated in dark jewel tones: crimson and burgundy, hunter green and midnight blue. There was a lot of dark wood and the simulation of several large mullioned windows, and a fireplace with the obligatory smouldering embers. Probably that was a metaphor of sorts. The Doctor wasn’t sure. The Master’s bed was a huge four-poster, all in dark wood, very medieval-looking, very baroque. The Master was in it, presumably asleep and the Doctor sat on the floor beside his bed and watched him for awhile, because he liked looking at the Master while he slept. He liked knowing there was someone else aboard the TARDIS besides himself.

“Why do you do that?” The Master’s hazel eyes fastened on him. “Sitting there like that and staring at me. What can you possibly get out of it?”

“I wondered if you were comfortable.” He debated over what to say next. “If perhaps you wanted to talk, or something.”

“Talk?” The Master sneered at him. “With you?”

The Doctor climbed to his feet and walked away, quickly. He held himself in check until he’d gone four corridors and three flights of stairs, into an area of the TARDIS he’d never seen. She liked to change things about; clearly, She’d been doing that lately. Perhaps She found the Master’s presence unnerving. The Doctor felt Her concern close about him like a blanket, and he was weeping savagely, a vicious emotional storm, the kind that always left him feeling drained and weak and vaguely ashamed. Even his tears felt different at a time like this: scalding hot, burning his skin like acid. He huddled on the floor and laid his cheek against Her. He smiled a little as She crooned to him, something pretty and ethereal, with bells and crystals in it. Perhaps he even slept a little.

He came to himself a while later, his cheek red and hot from where he’d lain against Her, his tears dried to salty trails on his face. They were circling a red dwarf star; he recognised its energy. It had a nice glow to it, a comforting residual energy like a dying fire.

“I’m hungry.” The Master’s voice sliced him through. “Why are you lying on the floor? Are you sick?”

_Come on, regenerate!_

_What? And spend the rest of my life with you?_

“No. I’m fine. I fell asleep.” He led the way unconsciously, as though he remembered it, even though everything was different now, everything had shifted round. “The kitchen...there’s food in the refrigerator."

“Were you crying?” Bitter contempt, perhaps even hatred.

“Crying? No, just fell asleep.” The inside of his chest was a howling abyss. He fought to sound normal, even jaunty.

“You look like you’d been crying.”

“No, not crying. Now then, let’s see what we’ve got.” The refrigerator held whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. If he wanted smoked salmon, it appeared. Similarly for fruit, cake, fresh bread, cheese, wine, chocolates and ice cream. If he wanted blue pocket-oysters from M67A14, they were there, swimming happily in the customary red sauce.

“I’ll have this.” The Master seized a container of ice cream and a spoon. “I’m starving. I hate being mortal. Always hungry. Always. Having to sleep, eat, bathe, all the rest of it.” He dug the spoon in. “Disgusting species.” He stopped, his expression unreadable. “This is good.” He waved the spoon at the Doctor. “I mean, this is really good. Have you tried this?”

“What kind’s it?” The Doctor fetched his own spoon. Somehow they ended up sitting cross-legged on the floor, gazing at each other.

“It says it’s chocolate coffee mocha fudge. Went a bit overboard on the name.” The Master made satisfied noises while he was eating. “Do you hate me?” he asked, conversationally.

The Doctor avoided meeting his gaze. “You know I don’t hate you.”

“Right.” His spoon worked in tandem with the Doctor’s. “You _forgive_ me. Don’t you?”

“Yes.” He forced himself to look: the Master had a smudge of chocolate on his cheek. “You’ve been spreading it round,” he said. He pointed, reached over and wiped it away with the sleeve of his dressing gown. 

The Master drew back as if he’d been struck. “You touched me.”

Just there, the Doctor thought...just for a moment, you let your guard down. You were the Koschei that I knew. “Not the first time,” he said, “or is your memory going in your old age?”

The Master reached out, touched the Doctor in the same place. He allowed his touch to linger for a moment, while his gaze played over the Doctor’s face. Then he dropped his hand.

“We’re the only two of our kind,” he said, after a moment. “The only two left in the entire Universe.” He licked his lips. “Do you ever think about that?”

“Yeah.” The Doctor toyed with his spoon, looking at his own reflection in its tiny metal bowl. “I think about it a lot.”

“Do you ever get lonely?” The Master asked.

“Yes.” He took a breath, waited. “Do you?”

“Mm.” The Master put the ice cream aside. His hands lay quiet in his lap. “We aren’t who we were on Gallifrey, Theta. You know that. There’s been too much...” He searched for an appropriate metaphor. “Too much everything. Too much Time, for starters.”

“And you hate me now — far too much to let me in, ever again.” The Doctor nodded, once. “Well.” He climbed to his feet. “Think I’ll go to bed.” He walked away quickly, didn’t look back. He couldn’t bear to hear the Master jeering at him. He couldn’t stand to have his loneliness and his neediness thrown back into his face. He went into his own bedroom and stripped off his dressing gown and, on an impulse, stripped off his pajamas and climbed between the sheets naked. He fell asleep listening to Her sing.

 

 

“We’re the only two left, Doctor.” The Master spoke in a whisper. He lay next to the Doctor, staring into the dark.

The Doctor rolled onto his side. He could barely see the Master, could just make out the pale gleam of his cheek, the tip of his nose. “I keep asking myself what it means...what it might mean...if it means anything at all.” It was like a conversation they’d started, ages ago: it continued as though they’d never left. As though none of it had ever happened.

“You plan to keep me, don’t you?” His breath ghosted against the Doctor’s naked shoulder; the Master was naked, too. His body’s heat burned into the sheets and spread inexorably towards the Doctor. “Forever.”

The Doctor sighed. “Koschei, I can’t force you to do anything. I can’t designate myself your keeper. Much as I want to...and not for the reasons you think.”

The Master was silent for a long time. “What reasons?” he asked, finally. His voice was husky.

“I think you know.”

In the long silence that followed, the Master’s hands moved to touch the Doctor’s face...

**Author's Note:**

> Tenth Doctor (Tennant) and Simm!Master, which probably goes without saying but I thought I'd just put that in there. This supposes the Master didn't die after Lucy shot him and also supposes that she may not have even shot him. 
> 
> The Doctor obviously believes that he and the Master can recapture the relationship of their youth, but he underestimates the depth of the Master's pique.
> 
> As far as I know there is no such thing as blue pocket-oysters from M67A14. As far as I know. They may in fact exist.


End file.
